Jeff Poor

On Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s “State of the Union,” South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham was upfront in attacking what he perceived to be shortcomings in how the U.S. government was able to handle last week’s bombing at the Boston Marathon.

In his appearance with New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, he said either the FBI had “missed a lot of things” or they were prevented from acting accordingly by existing law.

“Once you’re brought to attention by a foreign government, I think you should have a red flag put then, to be taken off later,” Graham said. “The ball was dropped in one of two ways — the FBI missed a lot of things, as one potential answer or our laws do not allow the FBI to follow up in a sound, solid way. There was a lot to be learned from this guy. He was on websites talking about killing Americans.”

“He went overseas as Chuck [Schumer] indicated,” Graham continued. “He was clearly talking about radical ideas. He was visiting radical areas and the fact that we could not track him has to be fixed. It’s people like this that you don’t want to let out of your sight, and this was a mistake. I don’t know if our laws are insufficient or the FBI failed, but we’re at war with radical Islamists and we need to up our game.”